Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest planet in the solar system. The planet is around 4.5 billion years old, and life appeared on its surface around 3.5 billion years ago. In our universe, Earth is the only place where life is known to exist with millions of species. Earth has a natural satellite, the moon, and orbits around the Sun once every 365.26 solar days.

Learn how our Earth was formed by accretion of spatial particulates and large masses, and eventually formed an outer crust. The video takes you to the early Earth with its plates and land masses, and their movement through time.

A tour of Earth's most impressive landscapes... as captured by astronauts with their digital cameras from space. NASA's astronaut team describes the special places that spacemen focus on whenever they get a moment.

A presentation of time-lapse sequences captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It gives us a beautiful and clear view of some well-known coastlines and countries around the world.

The Earth's crust may seem stationary and rock-steady, but it is always in motion. In this lesson learn about Earth's geology. Scientists have studied earthquakes, volcanoes and other seismic activity to develop theories that explain the movement and deformation of the Earth's crust over millions of years.

Can you guess how the globe will look 100 million years from now? Continents formed as Earth's crustal plates shifted and collided over millions of years. This video shows how today's continents evolved over the last 600 million years, and where they'll end up in the next 100 million years.

A lunar scientist explores how the Moon was created, and its relationship with Earth. The debris from a cataclysmic collision of another planet on Earth created what is now our moon, just 14,000 miles from Earth, the closest it has ever been.

Learn how climate change not only affects us, but also alters something as vast, deep and mysterious as our oceans. With the help of satellites and high-tech sensors, scientists gather data on ocean surface temperature, ocean winds, sea level, circulation, and even marine life. It helps us gain valuable insights into the impacts of climate change on oceans.

Learn about global warming and the resulting rise in sea level across the globe. Explore the impact of global warming, its effect on the Earth's ice and water to better understand how sea level rise might affect us all.

Carbon is all around us. This unique atom is the basic building block of life, and its compounds form solids, liquids, or gases. Carbon helps form the bodies of living organisms; it dissolves in the ocean; mixes in the atmosphere; and can be stored in the crust of the planet. Understanding how the carbon cycle is changing is key to understanding Earth's changing climate.